Cherub of Hell

1) Binary files are 1s and 0s

2) Knitting has knit stitches and purl stitches

You could represent binary data in knitting, as a pattern of knits and purls…

You can knit Doom.

However, after crunching some more numbers:

The compressed Doom installer binary is 2.93 MB. Assuming you are using sock weight yarn, with 7 stitches per inch, results in knitted doom being…

3322 square feet

The idea of a “binary code” was originally developed in the textile industry in pretty much this exact form. Remember punch cards? Probably not! They were a precursor to the floppy disc, and were used to store information in the same sort of binary code that we still use:

Here’s Mary Jackson (c.late 1950s) at a computer. If you look closely in the yellow box, you’ll see a stack of blank punch cards that she will use to store her calculations.

This is what a card might look like once punched. Note that the written numbers on the card are for human reference, and not understood by the computer. 

But what does it have to do with textiles? Almost exactly what OP suggested. Now even though machine knitting is old as balls, I feel that there are few people outside of the industry or craft communities who have ever seen a knitting machine. 

Here’s a flatbed knitting machine (as opposed to a round or tube machine), which honestly looks pretty damn similar to the ones that were first invented in the sixteenth century, and here’s a nice little diagram explaining how it works:

But what if you don’t just want a plain stocking stitch sweater? What if you want a multi-color design, or lace, or the like? You can quite easily add in another color and integrate it into your design, but for, say, a consistent intarsia (two-color repeating pattern), human error is too likely. Plus, it takes too long for a knitter in an industrial setting. This is where the binary comes in!

Here’s an intarsia swatch I made in my knitwear class last year. As you can see, the front of the swatch is the inverse of the back. When knitting this, I put a punch card in the reader,

and as you can see, the holes (or 0′s) told the machine not to knit the ground color (1′s) and the machine was set up in such a way that the second color would come through when the first color was told not to knit.

Wires going through magnets.  This is how all of the important early digital computers stored information temporarily.  Each magnetic core could store a single bit - a 0 or a 1.  Here’s a picture of a variation of this, called rope core memory, from one NASA’s Apollo guidance computers:

You may think this looks incredibly handmade, and that’s because it is.  But these are also extreme close-ups.  Here’s the scale of the individual cores:

The only people who had the skills necessary to thread all of these cores precisely enough were textile and garment workers.  Little old ladies would literally thread the wires by hand.

With a Jacquard loom instead of painstakingly picking up every little thread by hand to weave in a pattern, which is what folks used to do for brocades in Ye Olde Times, this basically automated that. Essentially all you have to do to weave here is advance the punch cards and throw the shuttle. SO EASY. 

ALSO, it’s not just “little old ladies sewed the first spacesuits,” it’s “the women from the Playtex Corp were the only ones who could sew within the tolerances needed.” Yes, THAT Playtex Corp, the one who makes bras. Bra-makers sent us to the moon. 

And the cool thing with them was that they did it all WITHOUT PINS, WITHOUT SEAM RIPPING and in ONE TRY. You couldn’t use pins or re-sew seams because the spacesuits had to be airtight, so any additional holes in them were NO GOOD. They were also sewing to some STUPID tight tolerances-in our costume shop if you’re within an eighth of an inch of being on the line, you’re usually good. The Playtex ladies were working on tolerances of 1/32nd of an inch. 1/32nd. AND IN 21 LAYERS OF FABRIC. 

Here are the punch cards:

Some of these looms take up to 1600 spools. That is necessary to make their many different patterns.  Here are some patterns:

How many punchcards per pattern?

 This many:

Greater generational income inequality. “Boomers in their 30s [in  1990] owned 21.3 [%] of the nation’s wealth,” whereas “Millennials in their 30s today own 4.6% of the nation’s wealth.” 

Wage stagnation. This occurred because of “right to work” anti-union laws enacted in Republican controlled states. Of the 27 states that have passed these laws, 23 are below the mean U.S. household income, 8 are in the poorest national quintile (state rankings of 41-50), 6 are in the second poorest national quintile (state rankings of 31-40), and 9 are in the third poorest national quintile (state rankings of 21-30). 

Increased student loan debt and inability to wipe out debt via bankruptcy. Reagan led the way as governor of California in cutting aid to public higher education and in putting an end to “free tuition” at the University of California. “As president, [Reagan] began the methodical process of eliminating federal and state support for [college] tuition.”  Furthermore, in a massive GOP “gift” to banking, people can no longer “discharge student loans through bankruptcy.”

Price gouging (which contributes to inflation). “In 1983, President Reagan ordered the federal government to stop enforcing the anti-trust laws,” resulting in “merger mania,” which allowed for the growth of huge monopolies that “crushed” small businesses, including startups, and allowed for price gouging with impunity.

Increased individual medical debt (and bankruptcies), increased spending on healthcare, and lower life expectancy in the U.S. compared with other developed nations. This all occurred because the “Reagan Revolution” encouraged the end of state “nonprofit requirements” for “health insurance companies and hospitals,” to be replaced by “free market principles.” 

Excessive pharmaceutical prices. Because of the “Reagan Revolution,” drug companies were allowed to become “monopolistic monoliths” that could charge whatever they wanted for drugs.

Excessive housing costs. The GOP Congress under New Gingrich “’deregulated’ the financial industry.” That’s why today “trillion-dollar hedge funds and investment groups are purchasing as many as half…of the available-for-sale housing, so they can turn them into rentals and then, when they’ve cornered the market, jack up the prices.”

A large “transfer of real wealth” to the “top 1%.” “Reagan dropped the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich from 74% down to 27%, and cut corporate tax rates from 50% to functionally nothing […] This 42-year-long process, with Reagan’s original massive tax cuts amplified by trillions more in tax cuts for the morbidly rich from the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations, has produced a $50 trillion transfer of real wealth from the middle class to the top 1%.”

Hartmann also describes other ways that Republicans since Reagan have continued to destroy our nation (and in terms of climate change, potentially the planet):

Climate change denial. “Republicans, right across-the-board, continue to deny [climate change], in deference to the fossil fuel industry and its billionaires that funds their elections. They’ve put money and power above the fate and future of your and your children’s planet.”

Politicians for sale. Through the “Citizens United” decision, the Republican appointed conservative Supreme Court justices have allowed “billionaires and corporations” to virtually buy politicians–making it hard for anyone in Congress (especially Democrats) to pass any laws not approved by the oligarchs who “own” members of Congress [mostly Republican but some Democrats too]. 

Promoting autocracy, trying to overturn legal elections, and trying to rig future elections. Trump and his Republican cronies “tried to end our 240-year experiment in democratic self governance, and are now actively embracing neofascist autocracy, openly trying to emulate the rightwing strongman governments that have taken over Russia and Hungary.” Republicans are also attempting “to rig our elections by purging millions of minority, Boomer, and Millennial voters from the rolls.”

Limiting reproductive rights. [Republicans, through the appointment of conservative Supreme Court justices have] “succeeded in overturning the right to abortion.” [Some Republicans, including Justice Thomas, are also threatening to go after birth control.]

“Openly embracing homophobia and misogyny.” [Hartmann didn’t elaborate on this but some ”Don’t Say Gay” laws and anti-trans laws have passed or are being considered in red states. Some in the GOP want to overturn Obergefell and Lawrence so they can do away with same sex marriage and can re-criminalize homosexual behavior. Not only are the challenges to reproductive rights misogynistic but many of the educational gag order bills/guidelines in red states prevent the discussion of sexism in public education.]

Gun culture run amok. [Thanks to the efforts of the gun lobby and the conservative Supreme Court Heller and Bruen decisions, pandora’s box has been opened and we are stuck with the] “400 million guns drenching our country [in] blood, and… Republicans [being] unified across-the-board to prevent any further action to stop gun violence in America.”

White supremacy, racism, and a “whitewashed” American history. “And now, these Republicans are trying to marinate your children in their white supremacy and racism by forcing teachers to push a false narrative about American history.”

Still, Hartmann tried to end this depressing narrative  of the “Reagan Revolution” legacy on a positive note. 

The good news, however, is that, increasingly, [Boomers and Millennials] are working together to throw Republicans out of office and elect progressive Democrats who understand these issues and know how to do something about it.

From the 80-year-old Senator Bernie Sanders to 19-year-old progressive candidate for the Ohio House Sam Lawrence… progressives are growing in political power at the same time America is waking up from the fog of bullshit Republicans have been crop-dusting over us since 1981.

All is not lost; change is in the air.

Get out there. Get active. Tag, we’re it!

________________________

"December 2020 was a turbulent month for Danielle Drake, 32, of Lake of the Ozarks. On December 1, her husband said he was going out with a friend, but he lied. He was actually having an affair. She filed for a divorce less than a week later, on December 7.

Then, not long before Christmas, Drake found out she was pregnant.

Drake knew immediately she had to file a second, amended petition for divorce. She also knew the impact her pregnancy would have on the divorce proceedings. Drake, who earned a law degree from University of Missouri Kansas City has been practicing family law for two years, was well aware that in Missouri, women who are pregnant can't get a divorce.

Missouri law states that a petition for divorce must  provide eight pieces of information, things like the residence of each party, the date of separation, and, notably, “whether the wife is pregnant.” If the answer is yes, Drake says, "What that practically does is put your case on hold."

“[T]he whole basis for Missouri putting the pause on a divorce proceeding until a child is born is because Missouri divorce law "does not see fetuses as humans.You can't have a court order that dictates visitation and child support for a child that doesn't exist," she says. "I have no mechanism as a lawyer to get that support going. There's nothing there because that's not a real person."

Meanwhile, the state of Missouri has recently outlawed abortion in nearly all instances, barring medical emergencies.

but even then, the distinct things that i recognize in femmes (queercoding, if you will,) are always absent, because they are deviations from the male gaze. femininity is expected to be a performance for the male gaze, femininity embraced by lesbians is literally the opposite. guess what we see on tv?

and i don't say this to be like "ooh femmephobia is real!" rather, my point is that media just hates lesbians. and i dislike when people say "all we see for lesbian rep is femmes," because we don't see femmes, we see feminine people playing a lesbian based on a straight interpretation of what femme and the female gaze is. they literally don't understand it. there is no gender nonconformity, no actual femme coding on any of these characters; what you mean by "femme" is they wear makeup and maybe high heels.

actual femme rep in media:

Or this: 

Or this: 

You have get your name crossed off (if you don’t want to wear the fine), but you don’t have to make your vote counted if you’re opposed to it. 

And it is so, so easy to vote. Stuck at work or on holidays? That’s fine. Do a postal vote.  Stuck in hospital? That’s fine. They’ll go to you. Stuck in an old people’s home and can’t get around? Again, they’ll go to you. It’s amazing to me that it’s so hard for so many Americans to actually vote. If you make it compulsory, than at least the government is obligated to provide you with the means to vote. 

Our system certainly has some issues still, but I can show up to somewhere nearby, line up for a few minutes (if at all), vote exactly in line with my values (on paper, leaving a paper trail that can be recounted), and then buy a sausage and some home made cupcakes on my way out.

A country’s voting system matters a hell of a lot and every citizen deserves one that makes it easy to vote and results in a government that is representational and accountable.